Back to Episode One

The final stretch of DPS 909 rolls in, but the work hasn't gotten any easier. I've learned so much, yet it seems I'll never run out of stuff to learn. This is both good and bad.

There was the comment on my v0.2 Portable Canvas; it doesn't work on Mac. The solution seems simple enough; compile it on Mac, just like I did on Windows. But, after all the trials and tribulations that came *after* the simple compile the first time around, I've forgotten how to build the thing! It's like starting 0.1 all over again, and that took a while...

The next major obstacle is the new feature I've set for myself (with Cathy's approval). I want Portable Canvas to be able to load a local file. Such a simple goal represents a mountain of dirt to dredge through...

For one, there's no such thing as a Canvas 3d file. C3d creates objects by modifying data within a canvas element tag, so the state of the tag is constantly changing. The complexity is enormous, never mind the fact that I haven't created a working example online yet.

Next up is the modification of code. I've never written a serious JavaScript application in my life, and now I'll have to write one that dynamically creates local content. Tom Aratyn was kind enough to perform a guest lecture on JS; it'll be a big help for sure, though I still feel a little under-prepared.

The word of the day is "worry", because there'll be plenty of it. ^^;;

Mozilla in Cahoots with Ghostbusters?

Along my journeys across Mozilla code, I couldn't help but notice this line:

var t = document.createElementNS
("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul", "tab");

The thing that stood out most was the strange, but almost deliberate, folder structure of the XUL include file.

The keymaster and gatekeeper were key characters (no pun intended) of a niche movie called "Ghostbusters" which appeared in the early 80's. The gatekeeper of that story also happens to go by the name of Zuul (pronounced XUL).

On top of that, Mozilla's JavaScript debugger (or de-ghoster?) shares its name with Peter Venkman, one of the lead Ghostbusters.

One must wonder if there's a connection...

Released into the wild

Open source development has been a roller coaster ride in the most extreme sense.

It's been like trying to climb a vertical wall, and facing a challenge that just doesn't seem possible. Moments of "EUREKA!! I'VE GOT IT!!!!" are proceeded almost immediately with "Wait, that's not what I'm supposed to do at all...", and followed soon by "Yet another dragon to slay. *sigh*".

It's not like other courses, where intuition nets me a B+ and can finish assignments in a midnight rush. Here, my intuition leads me into confusion and circular mazes. I used to be able to think up contingency plans effortlessly until the problems get solved; with Open Source, none of these plans work out in the end... ever. It's like being Superman, but without the power of the yellow sun.

Here's how yesterday started:

I thought I had achieved a peak of pure genius when I changed MyBrowser's application.ini file to recognize Gecko 1.9 (which C3d needs). Sadly, it refused to install the extension through addons.mozilla.org. So, I default to using a Minefield build, which installed C3d just fine, but it didn't carry the extension when rar'd and sent to another computer.

At the brink of despair, I plodded back into #seneca, where I was greeted with welcome arms and a new strategy. Instead of hacking Firefox to store everything locally, I could just run "make profile" to do almost the same thing. Extensions became simple to include, too. I suppose I had wandered alone long enough to earn the one answer I needed to finally achieve the goal.

Then, mfinkle pops in and tells me I can still do what I need to do, but through MyBrowser instead. After several loops through editing rdf's and ini's, I am now back to coercing MyBrowser to use the C3d extension...

Here's the details on the mixed adventure, rephrased so I sound like I almost know what I'm doing.